MY COMMUNITY BOARD

when we created this online platform with our social network, it was designed as an alternative to Facebook.

No data mining, no commercial advertising, no fake likes, no fake profiles, no surveliance. It is still fascinating for me how many of the people that agree on the argument that FB is very problematic still post on FB- very regularly. When I talk to my friends, usually the argument goes like this: "You are right, FB is very problematic, BUT it is very convenient and because everyone is there I can reach all of my friends easily."

thanks!I am more and more happy that I never had facebook and honestly hope that more people will realize these facts.I just got back from "DIY" festival in Moscow and every and none of those "anarchists" could believe that Idont have my account...sad

First of all I completely agree that Facebook is highly problematic - you could argue this has been the case since its release. I think the key problem is not Facebook itself, but the users' flawed perception of what it really is. There seems to have been these kind of expectations of a social network mirroring life with altruistic noble intentions (very understandable as this is how Facebook continues to market itself to some degree). If people stopped using Facebook as a 1:1 digital rendering of analog life, and instead as a flawed fun disjointed digital tool, I think the money-making would come to a sudden end (no useful data to mine and highly difficult targeted marketing). Thus, Facebook would decline into what it essentially is: An imperfect tool that is useful for certain things.

Soeren, I think FB feeds on the big preassure to represent and be represented. The reasons for that are many and we do have a pretty paradoxical situation. On one hand peoples awarenes of abuse: surveliance, monitoring, data mining etc is bigger than ever, but cultural patterns in terms of technology use are going more and more in the oposite direction one would think aware people would be driving them. I use FB mainly as a source for interesting content that people in my network post. I wonder why such an exchange could not happen more on independent platforms like this one. But here the dialogue could be nurtured as the ammount of communication would be less, better and more focused.

Oliver, your selective use of fb is exactly what I meant, as it seems that you clearly view it as one, deeply flawed yet popular, social network rather than THE ultimate, awesome solution to how we could engage socially online. Instead of the one-way manipulation we recently learnt is happening on massive scale with the positive/negative feed experiments, I would love to see people experimenting themselves with manipulating fb. Everyone is there across age, religion, gender, culture etc. That's such a strong argument for using it. But why not define your use? (from fb’s POV: misuse it)? Data-mining is only as good as the data being mined. The pressure of representing and being represented can easily be switched to a game of playful subversion. I still remember the first time I saw a friend with a made-up name, so simple and yet liberating when viewed in the context of "faithful" amped up real life representations. This is not to say that I disagree with the value of other platforms - this is absolutely crucial. (Sidenote: I believe anyone should try designing a social network. No matter how small or simple, the process confronts you with fundamental choices that “matured” popular networks such as fb have succesfully bypassed to a degree that we have difficulties imagining any successful alternatives).

I think our main challenge is to revert fb back to what it is: An online social network that doesn't necessarily has anything to do with real life. Stripped of any content we’re basically looking at an empty frame that we can tweak and bend through our content and interaction and playful subversion. Fb’s popularity makes it a centerstage for this kind of negotiation. The slow shift we see with dropping popularity among youth in Western countries is countered with growth among the elderly and expansion across development countries etc. Whereas it seems tempting to flee the ship, I hope that critical users will not only go elsewhere but also stay and obfuscate the ultimate “value” of fb: its useful, digestible, rational, exploitable, marketable content.

Soren,the playfull appropriation and subversion of FB is something i like, but so far - at least among my FB freinds, I havent seen much of it and there is many critically minded persons in my FB network data mining is only as good as the data you said- this is wondrful. But the problem is that very very few people have the awarenes of the business models of FB and similar technologies and how this relates to their data and their privacy, freedom, social relations and and much more... The lastest revelations of FB' manipulation are fascinating, but still, I cant see much of a change in peoples behaviour. Having said all this- I agree very much with what you wrote and I think there is posibilities to intervene in FB, but they will be difficult to put in to practice on a larger scale.

What I also really like is this: (Sidenote: I believe anyone should try designing a social network. No matter how small or simple, the process confronts you with fundamental choices that “matured” popular networks such as FB have succesfully bypassed to a degree that we have difficulties imagining any successful alternatives).

I have been folowing Diaspora for a while but have not been checking it for a while. Is there any other alternative networks you know off? I dont know of them- at least not in the sense of being open for people to join and without intentional data mining and commercial advertising...

This new perspective about Facebook has made me rethink how to do social networking for business and portfolio etc. Thanks for sharing this!

I was strongly interested for a while in the financial interests of possibly unethical Facebook investors, one being Goldman Sachs and then independent business people worth millions and billions of money buying into the next greatest cash cow. I wrote about this in an article for university last year in 2014.

The problem and situation is this kind of information about ethics and investors is not widespread; this information is mostly located on professional business and investment websites and magazines. So this information stays within the business and money systems where regular people usually do not go to seek info/entertaining info, thus never find it to help with awareness, because people usually do not question the safety and ethics of brands. Even when this information and awareness is brought into the mainstream news for 5 minutes, our culture and technology seems to be making people gain more short term thinking and short term minds. People may care and change their habits and thinking when they are given this new awareness about Facebook but many people forget within a short time frame and just continue doing what they are used to doing, and to fit in with everyone else.

I was active on Facebook for two years but then quit, deleted my Facebook account. I managed to pretty much avoid using Facebook for 30 months. (And without joining any other social networks where my friends were located on, because they were all usually on Facebook) With the exception of a small period where I needed to use Facebook for a university group assignment for one semester. By the 30th month, I understood I was committing social suicide so I needed to rejoin the Facebook community. In a way I felt as though I was being forgotten by many people and friends that I knew because I was disconnected from Facebook. I am happy I rejoined Facebook because I can talk to people in different communities and friends now, who have moved to different cities, or are hard to reach by phone. I managed to find some meditation community pages on Facebook which has truly helped me a lot. I now encourage anyone to experiment with practicing meditation at some point in your life and make it work for you.

And I agree that it is a great idea for anyone to try and design a social network, great possibilities!

Another one in the series of latest warnings of how FaceBook and Google are actually killing the Internet and serious independent publishing through page rankings and advertising revenue control.

The Internet as we know it is dyingHow Facebook and Google are killing the classic Internet and reinventing it in their image

"Editorial decisions are at the mercy of algorithms that determine how and where traffic flows, and, consequently, the lifeblood of advertising revenue. A tweak in the algorithm and boom: You’re out of business. There’s nothing organic about building success online; there’s only the live-or-die question of whether you’ve properly cracked the code."

Wow that is really interesting to hear, I have noticed some things like that i think. Firefox Adblock Plus add on used to block every single ad on the internet including all facebook ads, youtube ads. It was truly amazing to use the internet for around 1 or 2 years for me maybe in 2011/2012 without having to see a single ad on the internet! The visual pollution of the internet because of the ads was gone, felt more comfortable looking at websites, less intrusive feeling.

But now the advertising giants have gotten there way and I am pretty sure firefox Adblock plus does not block any ads on the internet now, since 2013!!! The advertising companies complaints and efforts to stop adblock plus seems to have won now. It's tragic that everything has to be controlled so that money and power can continue to do business as usual.

From Glasgow to Brighton the streets of the UK look a little different this week. In 10 cities guerrilla install crews have been swapping 365 ads with art works, creating what is claimed to be the largest advertising takeover in world history.

It was always very interesting how the Zapatistas treated media and what kind of strategies and tactics they have employed. They were the first radical movement that has truly used the powers of the internet, but more than that already long ago, they have understood the relation between digital and physical in their communication strategies. Even more than that, they were able to use pop culture as a vehicle for their messages without falling in the realm of cooptation. If you have the chance to be in San Cristobal in Chiapas, go in one of the shops that sells Zapatista merchandise and have a look at the sophistication of the messages and artifacts. Not sure if this is true, but a story circulated that Marcos holds a PhD in media and communication studies.

And interestingly subcomandate Marcos - and his images, his representations especially- were regularly compared to those of Che Guevara, as Marcos being the new mythical leader of the global struggle against capitals oppression.

This is good. A long due reflection of instant formats of public events that aim to push for "innovation", "groundbreaking ideas" etc... Here a critique of TED talks by Benjamin Bratton. (I would add Pecha Kucha too.)

"In our culture, talking about the future is sometimes a polite way of saying things about the present that would otherwise be rude or risky.

But have you ever wondered why so little of the future promised in TED talks actually happens? So much potential and enthusiasm, and so little actual change. Are the ideas wrong? Or is the idea about what ideas can do all by themselves wrong?....

SustainTalks are the Royal College of Art's forum for discussion on all issues relating to sustainability and future living. Radical New Communities will look at the need to adapt to a changing world and the growing interest in radical new forms of community. Autonomous and self-sufficient, these are laboratories for new forms of art, architecture, agriculture, social integration and politics. Speakers include John Jordan and Isabel Fremeaux, founders of French post-capitalist, permaculture-art collective, Labofii; Rutger de Graaf, Managing Director of DeltaSynch, a Dutch floating city development; and Tony Dunne, Head of Design Interactions at the RCA and creator of United Micro Kingdoms.